The Darkest Hour (8 page)

A bit of bobble-headed nodding.

‘Can you run us through a typical shift?’

Peres checked the screen. ‘James worked eight-hour shifts, starting at nine in the morning, with one hour off for lunch, then finishing at six. He’d come in, get his run sheet, go out. We have a number of regular customers we move goods for, but also during the day when new customers call up with a request that goes out on the radio to one of the guys and so they might get that on top of the usual runs.’

Murray wrote in his notebook. ‘You have records of everywhere each vehicle goes?’

‘Yes, delivery dockets, mileage sheets, all that.’

‘Did Kennedy always drive the same vehicle?’

‘Yes. Well, I mean, he always drove a van, not a truck. But the van itself varied.’

‘And how did he get on with the customers? Were there ever any suggestions of conflict?’

Peres shook his head. ‘Like I said, he was a good employee. Did as he was asked, never caused any bother.’

‘Did he ever finish later than six?’

‘We try to avoid overtime,’ Peres said. ‘We have a few evening drivers and we give the late jobs to them.’

‘Were you here when he finished on Tuesday?’

‘No, I’m usually gone by five-thirty.’

‘So how can you be sure what time he left?’

Peres pointed to the computer. ‘All employees log out with their PIN code when they leave, plus there’s the security guard who lets them out the door.’

‘Can the PIN log be falsified?’ Murray said. ‘If another employee knows your code, he could put it in for you, couldn’t he?’

‘I suppose so,’ Peres said. ‘It’s against the rules though. The guard would notice too.’

‘Is he here now?’

Peres shook his head. ‘He doesn’t start till later.’

‘Okay, we’ll need his address then, please,’ Ella said. ‘We’ll also need a print-out of your log there, and a copy of Kennedy’s personnel file. We’d also like to talk to some of your staff.’

‘Is that necessary? We’re very busy, and–’

‘It’s necessary,’ Murray said. ‘Also, what about the crash Kennedy had three years ago? Had the survivors ever come around or been in touch?’

‘The woman’s family?’ Peres said. ‘Not that I heard of.’

‘There’d been no threats made, nothing like that?’

‘I’m certain that the staff would have let me know if anything like that was going on. But I can ask about, just to be sure, if you like.’

‘What did Kennedy do while his licence was suspended?’

Peres gestured at the window overlooking the warehouse floor. ‘Storeman duties, offsider on a truck if it was required, that sort of thing.’

‘You didn’t have any qualms about putting him back on the road afterwards?’

‘It was an accident,’ Peres said. ‘If the court was happy that he drive again, so was I.’

They followed him downstairs. He had a brief muttered conversation with the woman from the counter, who then went back to the computer. A moment later a printer started to click and whirr. Ella stood where she could see into the back room again. The nervous-seeming young man had gone. She went around the desk and started to open the door.

‘It might be better,’ Peres said, hurrying over, ‘if you want to talk to those people, if I ask them out one by one. Rather than disturbing them all at once.’

Ella put her head inside the room but couldn’t see the young man. ‘The person from that chair.’ She pointed at the empty space. ‘Where’s he gone?’

Peres looked into the room then checked his watch. ‘I don’t know.’ He looked around at the front-desk woman. ‘Did you see Benson leave?’

She shook her head. ‘I just went to the bathroom. He must have gone then.’

Peres frowned and leaned into the room past Ella. ‘Tina?’

A tired-looking woman in her mid-forties glanced up from her keyboard.

‘Where did Benson go?’

‘He said he was sick and was going home.’

Peres sighed, a sound of exasperation, and turned to Ella. ‘They’re supposed to come see me first.’

She shot a glance at Murray. ‘We’ll need his address too.’

T
he nervous young man was named Benson Drysdale, and he lived in Lidcombe, according to his employment records. Ella parked along from his building and got out of the car, eyeing the dingy flats with rows of washing hung on the balconies. Murray came around the front of the car and they walked in silence to the red-brick block.

At Drysdale’s third-floor flat Ella listened, then knocked on the door. There was no sound from inside but she had the feeling she was being watched. She stared at the peephole, looking for a change in the light.

‘Not home.’ Murray turned away.

Ella kept staring. She knocked again. Still nothing. Murray started down the stairs and, after a long moment, Ella slid her card under the door and reluctantly followed.

Outside Murray said, ‘Maybe he really was sick.’

‘Then he should be home and answering the door.’

‘Perhaps he’s at the doctor’s.’

Ella strode to the car. There was a reason Drysdale hadn’t wanted to have any contact with them. If he was so skittish as to feel he had to flee his workplace while they were there, he wasn’t likely to withstand a bit of shrewd questioning. Once they found him.

She rang Kuiper again. ‘Drysdale’s still MIA.’

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Hoskins checked with the bakery folks, who say Kennedy never got there last night. They all say he was a decent guy and they can’t believe somebody would want to kill him. And Strong’s just spoken to Quiksmart’s security guard, who confirms what the sign-off print-out shows: Kennedy did indeed leave at six last night. Guard seems solid. He’s ex-job. Said Kennedy seemed distracted, in a bit of a rush, when he left.’

Ella wondered what that could mean.

‘Anyway, next up is the PM for you two,’ Kuiper said. ‘Start driving now, you’ll get to Glebe right in time for the kick-off.’

The pathologist straightened Kennedy’s head on the stainless-steel table while Ella confirmed for him that the body was indeed that of James William Kennedy, identified to her by his daughter last night. Murray stood beside her, his arms folded.

‘No weapon found?’ the pathologist said.

‘Not so far.’ Ella could hear a squeaky wheel somewhere, indicating the progress of some body-laden trolley along the corridor outside.

Julie Connolly from Forensic Services stood on a box to get above the table with her camera. Kennedy was naked, having been stripped at the hospital before all efforts to save him failed and he was declared dead. The pathologist held a ruler against the dark-edged wound on Kennedy’s left chest and Julie fired off some shots, then the pathologist leaned closer with a magnifying glass.

‘There are sharp edges at both ends of the wound, indicating that a knife with a double-sided blade is most likely your weapon,’ he said. ‘There’s also a slight contusion around the wound, suggestive of the impact of the hilt against the skin.’

Murray unfolded his arms and wrote a few dot-points in his notebook. Julie got snap-happy again, getting some close-ups, then the pathologist probed the wound and measured the depth. Finally he took up a scalpel. ‘I’ll excise the wound and preserve it. We’ll be able to compare then, when you find a weapon.’

He lifted the piece of flesh from Kennedy’s chest with tweezers and dropped it into a jar of formalin.

Ella heard the wheel again and looked towards the door. She could see the end of a stationary trolley and the bare feet of a young woman. As they’d walked in past her, Ella had seen her painted toenails, how her naked thighs bulged against the clear plastic she lay wrapped in, the colourful tattoos on her belly and shoulders.

The pathologist cut through Kennedy’s ribs with something that looked like tinsnips only much more expensive. Kennedy’s head moved a little with each closing of the blades. Ella thought again about what he’d said to the paramedic. It was a heroic effort really. He would’ve known that the information would be passed to the police, and Ella felt fortunate to be the one to receive it. They were part of a team now, she and Kennedy, and as the pathologist drained dark blood from the open chest cavity, measuring the liquid as he went, she silently vowed to hold up her end of the deal. He’d given them the key piece of information, that little nugget they often searched so hard for, and from here on in it was a puzzle to be fitted together. Track Thomas Werner down; work out why he did it and precisely how; find proof that he was there or at least in the vicinity; build that case so solidly that a conviction was only a matter of time.

‘Fifteen hundred ml,’ the pathologist said.

‘Is that a lot?’ Murray asked.

The pathologist nodded. ‘Considering you said he was conscious and talking at the scene.’ He pushed his gloved hands into the chest. ‘Ah. Here’s the wound in the pulmonary artery. Half a centimetre across. He was lucky he wasn’t dead within a couple of minutes.’ He moved aside a little, letting Julie put the camera close.

Lucky wasn’t quite the word Ella would use.

Out in the corridor the trolley squeaked again.

Back at Parramatta, the detectives gathered in the Homicide office meeting room at four that afternoon. Kuiper was late. The room grew stuffy and smelled of coffee breath. Ella’s back and legs ached, and her eyes were sore and dry from being awake for so long. She sat with her arms folded and one foot tapping the leg of the desk. Beside her Murray licked his thumb with a small wet noise each time he turned a page of the newspaper.

Finally she said, ‘Could you stop that?’

He looked up. ‘Stop what?’ His lower lip and thumb were tinged black with newsprint.

‘Forget it,’ she said, looking away.

Her tiredness was dragging her spirits down as well. It was early days, she knew –
very
early days – but she couldn’t help feeling that what had seemed like a pot of gold landing in her lap when they’d gone to the hospital was turning tarnished. She was meant to have had Werner nabbed and behind bars by now, with Kuiper calling her in for a meeting with him and Detective Inspector Bill Radtke, Homicide head honcho, to tell her she was in the squad to stay. Being on temporary secondment was like standing on the edge of a cliff. You never knew when the earth would give way and send you plummeting back into the Valley of the Shadow of the Boring Suburban Station.

She realised she was making a face and stopped herself just as Kuiper rushed in.

‘Sorry, folks,’ he said. ‘Let’s get started.’

Ella opened her notebook and scribbled details as other detectives spoke about what they’d found. The five Thomas Werners listed in the police and RTA computers and phone directories had been checked out and cleared. The electoral roll check had turned up one more living in the Sydney area, but he was seventy-nine and could hardly walk. Next step was to check interstate.

‘Kennedy’s motorbike was found, parked and undamaged, on the roadside next to Steyne Park, down by Double Bay,’ Detective Graeme Strong said. ‘It doesn’t make much sense that he’d have parked there then trudged all the way up to New South Head Road for his bread. We know he left work in Leichhardt at 6pm and was stabbed near the bakery at eight forty-five. Much of the intervening time was daylight, even if it was fading, and so there’s a good chance that people in the houses or out enjoying the evening in the park would have seen him arrive.’

Kuiper nodded. ‘We’ll start a canvass, see when he got there, what he did, if he was with anyone. Kanowski?’

Detective Rebecca Kanowski, assigned to victimology on the case, sat forward. ‘I’ve spent a lot of time with Mrs Kennedy today. We talked about the accident with the Harveys but she’s adamant they never received any threatening calls or anything like that. We discussed Kennedy’s dying declaration, which she says is mostly poetry from their courting days and so a message of love, but she still says she has no idea who Thomas Werner is or who would have any reason to attack her husband.’

‘You searched all his stuff, got the bank records and so on?’

Rebecca made a face. ‘I’m taking it slowly for the moment. She’s very edgy. I suggested we call a doctor for some sedatives, and even took a moment to talk to the daughter and ask about any psychiatric history. She says it’s just the grief, that her mother needs some time and then she’ll give us everything we want.’

‘She knows it could help solve the case?’

‘She knows,’ Rebecca said. ‘But like I said, she’s very . . .’ She moved her hand from side to side. ‘I don’t want to push her when she’s so fragile.’

‘We need that information.’

Rebecca nodded. ‘I’m going back later.’

Kuiper looked around at them all. ‘I talked with Commissioner Eagers earlier, about this case and also about Steven Spiers.’

Someone groaned. ‘The Family Man.’

‘You’ve no doubt all heard his latest,’ Kuiper said. ‘It was bound to happen when he lives just streets from the crime scene. Despite his suggestions to the contrary, the murder rate is not going up at ten per cent per year, and Kennedy is – as far as we know at the moment – not a victim of out-of-control street crime. We’ve got plenty of avenues to investigate, so let’s get on with the case and ignore all the hot air.’

Ella fought back a yawn.

‘Okay,’ Kuiper said. ‘I know some of you have been on shift for hours, and some are fresh. Before we start dividing up the evening’s tasks, let me ask of those who started yesterday – hands up who wants to go home?’

Ella hurt her shoulder shooting her hand into the air.

When Kristi and Felise came home, Lauren was in the bath, trying to soak away her headache and the sedative fog before getting ready for night shift. Kristi knocked on the bathroom door and stuck her head around the edge. Lauren pulled the washer from her face. ‘Hi.’

‘You okay?’

Lauren nodded and smiled. ‘You?’

Kristi smiled back, then closed the door gently.

Lauren sank deeper into the water, wishing she really was okay. The knots in her shoulders were tight and hard.
Kennedy at the precipice
. She shut her eyes and felt the heat of the water join with the boil of her insides.

The phone rang. She heard Felise answer in her clear high voice then there was a tap at the door. Felise came in with the cordless phone in her hand. ‘It’s for you.’

‘Who is it?’

Felise put the phone to her ear. ‘Who is it, please?’ She listened, then said to Lauren, ‘He’s your friend.’

Probably Joe. Lauren got out of the bath and wrapped a towel around herself then took the phone. ‘You’d better not be ringing to say you’re taking a sickie tonight.’

‘Was that who I think it was?’ the accented male voice said.

Thomas
.

‘She sounds lovely. I should get to know her.’

Lauren sank down onto the side of the bath. Felise was jumping at the sink, trying to see her face in the mirror, then Kristi bustled in and stuck her hand in the bathwater.

‘You finished?’ she said.

Lauren managed to nod. How did he know where they lived?

‘No point wasting it.’ Kristi turned to Felise. ‘Into the tub with you, missy.’

Felise grumbled but started to unbutton her dress.

‘What’s she doing now?’ Thomas said.

‘Nothing.’ Lauren turned away as if he could see down the phone into the room. When her legs felt stronger she’d get up and walk out. She should hang up right now, but she was paralysed.

‘I really should get to know her,’ Thomas said again.

‘Oh, you think so.’ The hair bristled on the back of Lauren’s neck.

Kristi looked at her.

‘I do,’ Thomas said. ‘And I will, if you don’t do exactly what I say.’

Kristi mouthed,
You okay?

Lauren covered the mouthpiece with a sweaty palm. ‘It’s just work.’

Thomas said, ‘You’d better call the detectives on that case and tell them you were wrong.’

‘I don’t know if that will fit,’ she said. Kristi glanced over again, and she added, ‘With my roster, I mean.’

‘You’ve got twenty-four hours.’

‘But–’

‘That’s a pretty old house you live in,’ Thomas said. ‘You have to be careful with old houses like that.’

She sat frozen.